Do you have problems looking at modern LED LCD monitor for extended periods of time?

Eyestrain, dizziness, headaches

Extremely interesting read. After my old Dell 2209WA became defective, I tried to find a new monitor I could use. To my surprise, I have found out that the modern LED monitors are extremely unpleasant to look at, and I started to look for the source of the problem. It seems that all the flickers PWM and temporal dithering introduce to a computer screen is very harmful for the neural system - at least in case of sensitive people, and long-term.

Before I retired I worked in an office with almost 1,600 workers, all with computers. The majority of those people looked at their screens most of the day, but also talked to co-workers, had snacks at their desk, made phone calls etc. In other words their screen time had many breaks. Probably pretty typical of an office situation.

A handful of people had problems, but the problems were managed with changing refresh rates, taking walking breaks, UV filters. Probably some had a placebo effect. I can't recall a single case where it became a real issue.

Having said that, I have no doubt that staring at a screen without such breaks would indeed be a very detrimental experience.

I use them 2 LED monitors and a CCFL TV at home, 1 LED and 1 CCFL at work. No problem. But, I start off tweaking brightness & contrast 1st thing when I set one up. Contrary to the article, most new monitors seem to be too bright at default settings and dimming them down makes them easier on my eyes. The monitor I'm writing this on was almost unusable out of the box, but was fixed in a few minutes (brightness was too high, and reducing it had the extra benefit of reducing power consumption, according to my trusty Kill-a-Watt).

Well, this is something that the monitor-producing industry WILL have to address, if it wants to keep selling monitors. Having NEWER monitors worse than old monitors in some respects is something that will eventually not be tolerated.

Kamamura_CZ - Sorry to hear of your troubles. There's not much you can do without computers these days.

You can try a couple of things to help... first, turn the brightness WAY down. Second, see if you can shift the color toning towards yellow. Third, after shifting towards yellow, put some backlight behind the monitor - maybe a yellow toned, incandescent light will help if you can shift the display towards yellow also. If you can't shift the display hue enough to help, then try to find some yellow cellophane (try several going from lighter to darker) to see if putting that in front of the display helps.... on an anti-glare filter. You could also try polarizing the display with filters in front of it.

If that doesn't help, you could try yellow led's at 100% full duty as a backlight. Have you tried yellow wallpapers and WB's? Do they help at all?

Only buy 250 cdn monitors, only run them at full brightness, only buy good ones(it's not pwm itself, but cheap ass circuitry design with inadequate resistance and capacitance to maintain even flow) and only use them in a well lit room.

I have the same problem, sadly. The modern LCD is inferior to my old CRT that could do 100hz refresh rates at max resolution. Right now I'm stuck on this cheapo AOC(it's bad, but not as bad as most), shopping around for one that doesn't give me headaches in low light.

It's kinda the same reason I avoid backlit keyboards, to force myself to use external lighting. I'm not particularly sensitive, but after hours using a bright monitor, I will get a headache. A nap kills it, but avoidance is better. I have a lamp placed behind my monitor that's angled toward the wall. I turn that on and it provides a nice backlighting that runs up the wall and across some of the ceiling. It allows adequate light to see the keyboard and any notes I'm using while also bringing down the intensity of my dual screens, which typically use dark wallpapers for when I'm not typing and such to reduce strain between tasks. Then there's the usual break-up of dealing with notes, moving items that I'm referencing, snacking, etc.

First, I think you do have a sensitivity to it. I can manage fine with that many watts, or the CFL equivalent. Second, have you tried playing with the light? I do fine with the general overhead lights on, but I find that backlighting (I have white walls, mind you) works well too. If you have a lamp which allows any direct view of the bulb, that's probably doing more harm than good.

Okay, thanks for all the comments. After all that testing, reading, etc. I grabbed a cheap TN monitor BenQG2420HD - they offered it with 33% discount to empty the stock, to make room for all the extra-hip LED panels. After a few hours of testing, I have decided to keep it. First, it does not strain my eyes like the LED ones. After gaming for a few hours, nothing. After the same time at a LED monitor, my eyes are red and full of tears.

The colors are noticeably inferior to the Fujitsu P23T-6P panel, but that is to be expected (CCFL vs LED, 6bit vs 8bit). However, the uniformity of the screen is noticeably better, the fujitsu has a strong purple tint to blacks and strong backlight bleed in the lower left corner. The TN panel, believe it or not, has much better blacks, and I think contrast overall too.

Response-wise, the TN panel is much better. I play one extra-twitchy game, Mount and Blade Warband, and all the super-fast sabre and sword duels when you must block precisely in the right direction put any monitor to a very rigorous test. On Fujitsu, it is unplayable, the moving objects are not fluid, they jerk visibly, and everything has a strange stroboscope-like quality.

I have realized a maybe important thing - our eyes are comfortable with blurred movement in incandescent light (sunlight, candles, tungsten lightbulbs). Because the light is continuous, the moving item reflects it in every moment of its path, creating a continuous stream of visual information, a blur that the brain is capable of processing - that way, you can catch a ball, block a fist, or dodge a thrown stone. It all happens on a low-level of processing where rational thinking is too slow - that's why sportsmen and fighters must train their low-level reflexes by repetitious drill. That we can do - it's our heritage from a species fighting for survival for thousands of years under the incandescent sun- and moon- light.

However, if you substitute the incandescent light with a flickering fluorescent light, The stream of information in form of reflected light ceases to be continuous - you receive a certain number of discrete "snapshots", and the longer is the darker period of the PWM flicker, the fewer snapshots you get. Note that while movie frames that contain the "blur information" seem quite fluid at 24fps, we need at least 60fps of discrete, sharp-edged computer generated images to achieve a sense of fluidity. Now if you skip some of them due to the dark phase of the PWM flicker, you create an even more disconnected set of discrete images the brain has more trouble to interpret and extrapolate - it's no longer a blur.

The CCFL backlightflickers too, but because it stays on a few milliseconds after the current is switched off, the effect is less pronounced - the dark period of the PWM flicker is shorter, with less steep edges. LED switches on/off almost instantly, so the flicker is more noticeable, and requires higher switching frequency to become less bothersome. The manufacturers, to save development costs, use the old PWM circuits calibrated for CCFL use - and what was okay there is IMO grossly insufficient for WLED. They may change their ways, if there is enough discontent among the customers, that remains to be seen.

Does anyone knows if AMOLED displays are dimmed also by PWM, or by current levels? Could they mean salvation for our weary eyes?

BTW there is a battle going on between the regulators and LED bulb manufacturers (general lighting) for the minimal switching frequency required when dimming.

Energy Star pushed 150Hz (which is way too low), but the manufacturers lobbied for 120Hz, which is twice the AC current frequency. 120Hz LEDs have been known to induce stress, epileptic seizures, eyestrain, migraine, and other problems. The battle to save costs at the expense of customers rages on.

Thanks, but I think they are referring to the 3D mode specific flicker that is caused by the fact that you receive different images for left and right eye, while the other eye is temporarily blocked with IMO polarized filter, I did not study the so called 3d tech, because it adds only headache IMO.

Hi i brought a ips AOC 24inc monitor june last year.. i had massive headaches the day after i brought it like never before.. Googled it straight away since i only started getting them after the new monitor.. coming from a 17inc phillips lcd which was about 5 years old which never gave me a headache once!! So i took it back and got a 24inc viewsonic LED non-ips and it did the same thing strained my eyes and gave me headaches.. So i took it back 2nd time and got the AOC ips monitor back which i had before lol realizing if u turned up the brightness to 100% it would stop the flicker which u can see on a cell phone or camera when pointed at the screen and use other options on the monitor to try turn down the brightness.

But i ended up packing it away after wasting $300nz on it since i couldn't take it back the 3rd time around.. I still get the headaches daily even had a CT Scan thinking i had a tumor came back normal.... on meds now to stop the headaches daily which helps a little not 100% if the on going headaches came from the monitors maybe more due to poor posture from computers & work around the neck..

Kamamura_CZ i was wondering how your new ccfl monitor is going?? any headaches or eye strain? i looked up your model but can't find any non LED monitors in new zealand left...